


Happy Birthday, Dear Peter

by Azkaabanter



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Cupcakes, Gen, Irondad, It’s Peter’s birthday after the snap, Self-Loathing, Tears, Tony’s so fucking sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azkaabanter/pseuds/Azkaabanter
Summary: It’s Peter’s seventeenth birthday, only he’s not there to celebrate.Tony is.





	Happy Birthday, Dear Peter

 Tony sat quietly in the room he was given by the acting leader of Wakanda, general Okoye. It had been a while since the dusting, as the fractured Avengers had begun to call it. It had been just as long since the surviving Avengers on Earth looked warily at the ship Nebula and himself arrived on, and had grown even sadder when they saw himself and the alien being the only to exit. Tony had fallen to his knees in the grass right there- a culmination of his mortal wounds and his incredible grief pulling him down with a force stronger than gravity. Steve didn’t hesitate to run up to him and put a comforting hand on his shaking back, almost as if the last two and a half years didn’t happen. The blonde pulled him in closer when he saw the grey ash covering the genius’s hands. Things were still tense after his arrival; not a day went by where tears weren’t shed and Rogers didn’t break a new punching bag, or Nat didn’t punch through a wall and Bruce didn’t blow something up in the lab because he was distracted by grief.

 Usually Tony was among them, feeling so empty that he didn’t have the energy to keep fighting with Steve or teasing Bruce and Thor. He had a drink perpetually sloshing about in his hand, limping the halls of the palace trying to hide his physical pain as well as the mental. Everything felt like it was burning him or scarring him, everything felt too _close_ , like he was being suffocated. It brought back memories of after the Chitauri invasion, all those years ago. Back when the biggest threat to earth was solely an alien race and it only took a nuke and near self-sacrifice to fix. Still, Tony stayed with his team for countless nights in the banquet hall, talking over plans and trying to grieve together. But that night in particular he was locked away on purpose; he ignored everyone who came to the door- all but the servant who brought him the one thing he requested with a kind smile which was scarcely returned. The broken man closed the door and padded over to his bed, and sat down on the edge of it, staring for a long moment at the object in his hand.

 “Happy birthday to you.” Tony whispered to himself, holding a cupcake in his hand with a lone lit candle in the center. “Happy birthday, to you.” he tried not to let his tears fall. He’d lost so many already, what was the point anymore? Tears wouldn’t bring _him_ back. He was beginning to feel like nothing would. “Happy birthday, dear Peter-“ The room was dusted in the orange of the Wakandan sunset, but to a grieving father, all he could see was grey. “Happy birthday to you.”

 He gently blew out the candle, and placed the treat on the table beside him, burying his hands in his hair. His chest heaved up and down with dry sobs, pain crashing down upon him in heavy waves that he hadn’t felt since the actual event of Peter’s... death... happened. “You’re seventeen today, underoos.” He said to himself, eyes trained on the hands that held his mentee as he disappeared into dust, his last words a whispered apology that he had absolutely no reason to give. “You’re almost a man now. You’ve just about earned the second half of your title.” Tony’s smile held no joy, but his cracked lips formed one all the same.

 He laid back on the bed, arms spread haphazardly around himself, eyes now gazing unseeing at the ceiling picturing a mess of brown curls and a crooked grin. “I should be taking you on college tours. Not that I’d even think of letting you go anywhere but MIT.” Tony could almost feel Peter smiling beside him... it hurt. “You know I was gonna get you your first car this year... an old ‘66 Mustang, a red one like the one from the car show we went to in Brooklyn. I thought we could fix it up and trick it out a little. Make it that Spider-Mobile you’re always going on about.” He snorted. “Your hot aunt even gave me the ok.”

 Tony was silent for a full minute, knowing completely that if anyone were to walk in he’d sound absolutely insane. Not that it mattered- he pretty much was. The only thing he had left was taken from him, and he was shattered. “I wanted you to be better than me, Peter Parker. You could’ve been. And even though I know you still would have disappeared if you hadn’t’ve gotten on that damn ship, I still feel like it’s on me. I let this happen.” A tear that he didn’t think He had left to cry welled in the corner of his eye. “I wish it was me.”

 Night faded in through Tony’s window, and there was a knock at the door, preceded with heavy footsteps that could only belong to one person. The genius grunted in response, and the door creaked slowly open. He sat up groggily, praying that his eyes weren’t red and his cheeks weren’t splotchy. Steve stood in the doorway, chest rising and falling quickly, as if he’d been running; running to reach Tony. His blue eyes were wide with what the billionaire hadn’t seen since before he left-

 _hope_.

 It put a spark in his chest but he wanted to repress it. There was hardly any use in getting his hopes up. For all Tony knew, Rogers could just be trying to get him out of his room... again.

 “We think we found a way to bring them back.” He said, and in mere seconds Tony was up and off of his bed, running out the door after Steve, his last thoughts gone from his mind in less than an instant.

He left the cupcake with the lone blown-out candle in it on the nightstand, a different promise symbolizing the love of the man Tony had come to think of as a son. 

 “ _Happy Birthday, dear Peter. We think we know how to bring you home_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Another sad piece that isn’t sad enough. I think I’ll end up going back and fixing it at some point, but i had to post it on our slides boy’s birthday. If you want to make a request, follow my tumblr @Azkaabanter. I love you all!!


End file.
